Global Health Fellows

Major: Medical Humanities

My project will determine whether it is feasible to equip Baylor students to become competent medical interpreters. I will go through a national medical interpretation class taken by medical professionals and interpreters (the ALTA MIT exam) and will participate in an assessment to determine if I can receive a certification as a qualified medical interpreter. I will meet with Dr. Karol Hardin to discuss the course and to analyze the challenges and benefits in order to determine if it is feasible to implement an interpretation course in the Baylor curriculum. If it is feasible and beneficial for students to receive certification, we aim to develop this opportunity further for those who wish to enhance their cultural competency and language skills. This project will also serve to research the impacts that medical interpretation has on patient health outcomes in Spanish-speaking communities as well as outline the criteria of effective medical interpretation in different cultures.

Major: Neuroscience

Child sponsorship programs are created to improve the lives of children in impoverished countries and advance them toward successful futures. Eleven thousand children receive support through the Africa New Life Initiative in education, spiritual training, healthcare accessibility, and in-country resources. Working with the Baylor Department of Public Health and the Africa New Life Initiative, our study will focus on the well-being indicators of child health to understand their psychological and physiological outcomes from sponsorship programs.

Major: Business Fellows, Management

My project will be advocating for medicines made on Baylor's campus to become more affordable and accessible. Publicly funded research, such as grants from the NIH, plays a pivotal role in the early stages of drug development, often through discovering the compounds they are made of. However, due to resource constraints, universities frequently sell their innovations to pharmaceutical companies for further development. This can exacerbate global health inequities because the companies can market drugs at unaffordable prices, decreasing their access to the public and those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). My goal is to improve the licensing and patent process at Baylor and advocate for policies that ensure affordable access to medications, especially in LMICs.

Major: Biology

Hi, my name is Raghav Edara and I'm a sophomore majoring in Biology with a minor in Poverty Studies and Social Justice. I work in Dr. Bryan Brooks' lab where I research the global occurrence of Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim in wastewater treatment plant influent, effluent discharges, and surface water. Through this project we hope to gain a more holistic understanding of global concentrations of these antibiotics and identify potential exceedance of Anti-Microbial resistance threshold values among geographic locations for these drugs, both of which are listed as essential medicines by the World Health Organization (WHO.)

Major: Biology, Global Health Concentration

Dengue virus (DENV) is a major public health challenge currently posing threats of significant magnitude in the Western Hemisphere. My project aims to develop a DENV tiled amplicon PCR assay coupled with the Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ portable MinION sequencing platform. The platform will be used to sequence dengue-positive whole blood and serum samples collected from patients in El Salvador between 2022 and 2023. This strategy responds to the need for viral genomic sequencing methods that are more practical in resource-limited settings, and begins to address the current gap in DENV surveillance in El Salvador.

Major: Business Fellows, Biology

During my internship with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the Texas Children's Health (TCH) system, I am contributing to the Patient Geosentinel system, a global health project that tracks infectious disease trends in traveling populations. This work is crucial for understanding the spread of diseases across borders and improving surveillance and response efforts in global health. Additionally, I am involved in research on the Trichuris parasite, studying its impact on public health. Both projects have enhanced my understanding of infectious diseases in a global context and equipped me with practical skills to address health challenges worldwide.

Major: Public Health, Secondary Major in Statistics

My project investigates the lifestyle and nutritional patterns underlying childhood growth faltering and obesity among the Shuar, an Indigenous Amazonian population in southeastern Ecuador. This group is undergoing rapid but highly varying degrees of Market Integration, a process linked to mixed outcomes in child development and metabolic health in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Utilizing data from a food frequency questionnaire administered to 634 households across 42 Shuar communities between 2009 and 2017, I apply various supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms, including Principal Component Analysis, K-means clustering, support vector machine classification, and decision trees. This approach aims to reveal new insights into the patterns of Market Integration and its impact on growth, development, and health in LMICs.

Major: Biology, Cell and Molecular Concentrations, Minors in Environmental Studies and Biochemistry

I will be creating a database for the pediatric cohort of the collected data samples from Starr Co., TX. The database will lead to a better understanding of the factors that put certain populations at risk for neglected tropical diseases and the presence of any linkers between the adult and pediatric cohorts. The results of the analysis can be used to raise awareness of neglected tropical diseases, improve public health planning, and organize target health interventions for the Starr Co. population. Overall, my project consists of inputting data from surveys and lab testing, analyzing data, finalizing the database, and completing a manuscript and poster on my findings. 

Major: Biology, Minor in Biochemistry

Chikungunya (CHIKV) emerged in Central America in 2013 and continues to cause widespread outbreaks, with 3.7 million infections in the Americas so far. With no commercial vaccine or treatment currently in use, this disease is putting a heavy burden on susceptible populations. To investigate this burden, I am working with researchers at Baylor College of Medicine on a seroprevalence study for patient samples that were collected through the Acute Febrile Illness Program in Belize and El Salvador from 2020-2024. Using enzyme linked immunosorbent assays, I will be identifying samples that contain human IgG antibodies specific to CHIKV. I will then be performing demographic analysis on the results of these tests to identify risk factors that lead to higher prevalence of CHIKV within certain regions or populations.

Major: University Scholars, Secondary Major in Statistics, Minor in Biochemistry

Chagas disease, caused by parasitic infection by Trypanosoma cruzi, afflicts over 8 million people worldwide, and can lead to deadly Chronic Chagas Cardiomyopathy. In order to better understand T. cruzi for potential vaccine development, the National School of Tropical Medicine at BCM is employing immunopeptidomics. Via mass-spectrometry, BCM is able to generate large amounts of data concerning characteristics of individual peptides from T. cruzi-infected cells. Working with faculty in the Baylor Department of Statistical Science, I am performing data analysis to find patterns and overall learn more about the molecular makeup of T. cruzi.

Major: Communication Sciences and Disorders

My project centers around literacy in Rwanda, in partnership with African New Life Ministries and Baylor's Communication Sciences and Disorders department. Literacy is fundamental to an individual's personal, social, and economic development and goes beyond the ability to read and write. This work aims to investigate adults' perspectives and comfortability with book selection and incorporation of books into child interaction. Furthermore, the work will examine the differences in books of contrasting cultures. I will work with Professor Janet Sanker to survey various adults associated with Africa New Life's Dream Daycare in Kigali, Rwanda, to identify patterns and overall perceptions of culturally based books and their use within daily instruction.